Back On the Platform

Just me and the bar.

August 30, 2007 at 5:41 pm (Life, School, Training)

Today is my second to last day at work and it’s all about tying up the loose ends. I pulled together my work term report and with all the appendices it’s 75 pages…yes that’s right 75. Not all of it was written as part of the report, some of the pages are a computer script and a selection of the XML file created but the script, but it’s still all work I’ve done. It feels odd to be leaving here, despite the fact I didn’t gain the friends I did while working to my former law firm, it’s still a really cool and relaxed environment where I have been exposed to some of the best scientific minds in the world.

Training on Tuesday wasn’t stellar, my clean and jerks are still an exercise in frustration…I couldn’t even do 75. I was pretty upset, but took out my frustration doing easy triples with 95kg in the front squat. It will get better, I just need to figure it all out. Sometimes the clean problem leads me to question why I’m in this crazy sport…why oh why do I show up everyday to punish my body anymore. The football team has been having training camp lately and they come in and when one of them is doing power cleans it’s like they’re all involved with the yelling and the grunting. Olympic lifters walk on the platform and it’s just you and the bar. It seems like when I’m doing clean and jerks, it’s me, the bar and some force greater that I can’t figure out. But I am not going to let it get to me, I’m just going to keep going to the bar until it happens and it will happen. I don’t do giving up, just like I don’t do failing.

In other news I have a new “job”. It is a work-study position, I went to two meetings with professors for positions in their labs, one who was doing research with mosquitoes as disease vectors and the second who is doing among other things research on curvyback guppies (similar to idiopathic scoliosis in humans) and is getting into some human immunogenetics. The first may have been slightly better suited to where I think I might want to go, but the second just came across as caring more. The research seems really interesting and once I get the hang of feeding fish and cleaning tanks there is some serious opportunities to get my hands dirty in the lab. The other great thing about it is it’s flexible hours and really only about 10 hours a week. Lots of time to study and lots of time to rest/train. Oh except for the fact that I am now registered in the hardest course in my program…Biweekly exams. Very interesting immunology course…but biweekly exams.